Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Matrix Resurrections
The Matrix Resurrections modal opening is a visually stunning introduction, but also one that left some viewers puzzled as to what exactly was going on. The film continues the story originally completed in The Matrix Revolutions, bringing Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) back from the dead, and series co-creator Lana Wachowski back behind the camera, as the film both updates classic Matrix motifs as well as introduces new visual spectacles for audiences to enjoy. However, for all the spectacular action, the ambiguous modal opening does require some explaining.
The Matrix Resurrections opens with a familiar retread of the first movie's first scene. However, it soon becomes obvious that something isn't quite right. As the picture becomes clearer, it seems that this new spin on The Matrix is being coded by Neo himself. That's confusing enough on its own, but it's made even weirder given the fact that Neo is supposed to be dead. The last time audiences saw Neo, his lifeless body was being carried away by the Machines after he sacrificed his life to save the world from the rogue Agent Smith. This raises several questions as to both the recreation of the original Matrix scene and Neo's apparent survival.
Just as in every previous installment, The Matrix Resurrections features extensive tech-heavy exposition that can be understandably difficult for an audience to absorb. Even though the Wachowskis have never been in the business of explaining everything, they always leave enough bread-crumbs for die-hard Matrix acolytes to piece together what's really happening on screen. Using the clues provided throughout the movie, here's The Matrix Resurrections' opening scene and Neo's modal plan explained.
What Is Neo's Modal In The Matrix Resurrections
A modal is a standard sandbox program that game developers use to isolate and program characters for broader systems, such as video games or animations. When viewers are reintroduced to Neo, the Matrix has returned him to his old identity of Thomas Anderson, who is now a game developer made famous by, in a brilliant twist of fate, a trilogy of video games based on his own real-life story, The Matrix. The Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris), a program responsible for designing the new Matrix, cannot completely erase Neo's memories, so The Analyst hides the truth in plain sight. What Neo really lived in the last three films has been repurposed and presented to Thomas Anderson as a fiction he created. At the start of The Matrix Resurrections, Neo is dissatisfied with the riches and fame, and creates a modal, thinking he wants to recapture the feeling of making the first Matrix game. However, the hidden truth is that something much bigger is going on underneath the surface.
Neo's Matrix Resurrections Plan: How & Why He Creates The Modal
Neo, trapped inside the new Matrix, subconsciously designs the modal to engineer his own escape. He is not outwardly aware that he is a prisoner of the system, but he can't fully accept the programing of the Matrix either. Despite all The Analyst's success making a Matrix indistinguishable from real life, just like in The Matrix, Neo can still feel in his bones that something about his world is not right, even if he isn't aware of what exactly is wrong. On the surface, Neo designs the modal as an exercise, trying to recapture the excitement he felt when he first created the Matrix video games, and to figure out what it was about the story that compelled him in the first place. Underneath, Neo's subconscious is fighting the Analyst's programming from the inside, destabilizing the system enough to leave a door open for the resistance to get in and save him.
How Bugs Was Able To Access Neo's Modal
Bugs was able to access Neo's modal because it was running a loop with extremely old code, depicting the same extremely recognizable scene over and over again. It was the same type of code that Neo used to create the first Matrix video game twenty years before. Since modals and games were no longer typically made with such old code, Neo's Morpheus modal stuck out like a sore thumb among a sea of state-of-the-art systems. Combined with the familiarity of the Trinity escape sequence that hooked audiences on the Matrix series of games, Neo's modal was hidden to anyone who wasn't looking, but also out in plain sight to someone like Bugs, who was desperately and obsessively searching for Neo after seeing through Neo's digital-self-image the last time he had tried to escape the system.
How The Modal's Morpheus Became Self-Aware
The program Morpheus was designed by Neo as an amalgam of polar opposites: the original Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn) and Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). The inherent contradiction of Morpheus's will to freedom and Smith's nihilism destabilized the Morpheus program (he later describes the experience to Neo as "more than a little crazy-making"). Because of this, Morpheus rejects the modal's programming, becoming fully unplugged when he touches a mirror and sees it rippling with code. Eventually, Neo's design leads the Morpheus program to uncover his true purpose: to find Neo and free him from the Matrix. Once Bugs arrives, she and her crew are able to show Morpheus a way out of the Modal and into the broader Matrix, where they can find and convince Neo to return to the real world.
What If Neo's Modal Plan Had Failed?
If Neo had failed, and Morpheus had never rejected the modal's programming, then Neo may have been trapped in the Matrix forever. The Analyst had designed the new Matrix almost flawlessly, and by rewriting Neo's digital self-image, it was impossible for the resistance to find Neo the way the original Morpheus did in The Matrix. No one was coming to save Neo. He had to find a way to free himself, or else he would have been trapped along with Trinity forever in the Analyst's new Matrix, and the forces of the Machine would rule forever.